March 2010

Our friends over at Echelon are teaming up again with our comrade and team rider Smolik. To give you Broken Languages. A look into his new works that are all about Real Talk with emphasis on typography, hip hop & classic American imagery.

I’ve been lucky enough to have seen a few pieces here and there. Amongst the coffee and the coffee, but can’t wait to see the entire show. He’ll also be doing a live mural the night of the reception so you won’t want to miss it! HERE is the event link.

This year’s show will be held at 52 McCaul on May 8th. We’re happy to be working with Steve Ferrara and Lisa Martin of Well and Good. It’s refreshing to meet two people who are actively involved in the community and making a difference. Too many times I’ve seen ego creep in and over shadow the people and community they were trying to help. No need to ever worry about that, because they’re constantly too busy with lending a hand, planning & holding events and pushing forward with what needs to be done to help out not only the art community but also those in need. We work with a lot of great people and are lucky to have them onboard and looking forward to future projects.

The Gallery usually has a pop-up shop that houses works from previous shows and projects. As well it carries works from some pretty amazing musical and visual artists here and abroad. The night of the reception it will lend it’s self to us to showcase the items donated for the raffle and silent auction. We’ll be posting photos of the items and packages up for grabs in the coming weeks.

The back half of the gallery at the time was showing Broke: Photos from post-quake Haiti by Nick Kozak it’s not for the faint of heart. So No pictures were taken of the space. It will be home to our friend Alan Wood‘s first solo show. It couldn’t have worked out any better because he’ll also be taking part again in this years show.

This years show will be focusing on homegrown talent and will be benefiting Free Skates. To help build skateboards for kids here and abroad as well help sponsor kids for skate camps.

After a busy day of meetings print shops shipping and dropping off decks, it’s nice to relax. What better way to relax than good company, bad television and making a few hundred buttons. These are the gorilla buttons for our Bowman x TLG project coming this Spring.

I stop in to see my Gold Smith and good friend Elana( of kvell and co) hoping my new jewels might be ready. Lucky enough they were and they looked amazing as always. This is the third run of the Short Range Bazooka Trooper that comes with the FF logo tag and ball chain in 925 Sterling Silver. This time around we also have Single chains with tags available.

After running around the city and digging through fabric store basements and crawling over rolls of material, I found these two rolls of denim. The same day I stumbled across a moving sale and was able to find some amazing dead stock thread that fit perfectly. I was also lucky enough to grab the last box of tailor chalk.

Now back to the pattern making and with some reworks we’ll have FF’s first Denim line this Fall/Winter.

This weekend Sunday March 7th Smolik is hosting a Rail Jam at Horseshoe Valley in Barrie. The premise is that someone’s gonna yell out a trick and you have to kill it or that’s the end of line for you. $500 bucks in cash and tons of giveaways. If you’re around it’s definitely worth hitting up.

I can’t get enough of Smolik’s free-hand lettering and find myself just staring at this flyer and coming up with new concepts. As well, be on the lookout for the new Smolik x FF Collabo.